Fighting to Say No to Chemo ...

Fighting to Say No to Chemo
By Adam Baer, ADAM BAER is a writer in Los Angeles. He blogs at
glassshallot.com.
July 29, 2006

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...mment-opinions

A TRIAL NEXT month in Virginia will determine what kind of medical
treatment Abraham Cherrix, a 16-year-old with Hodgkin's disease, will
receive. At the same time, the case will call into question the
definition of "alternative" medicine and just how much of a role
government should have in our private lives and medical decisions.

Cherrix has already had one debilitating course of chemotherapy.
Nevertheless, a juvenile court ruled recently that he must undergo a
second course instead of following the organic, herbal treatment he
has chosen with his parents' consent. A circuit court judge this week
suspended the ruling and ordered the trial.

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According to a recent story on Cherrix in USA Today, chemotherapy
rendered the 6-foot-1 teenager so weak that he couldn't walk from his
car to his home. He felt deathly ill after treatment and feared at
times that he wouldn't make it through the night. So Cherrix did
research and found an alternative — the "Hoxsey herbal treatment" —
administered by a clinic in Mexico. It calls for a diet of organic
food and herbs, eliminating, among other things, sugar, tomatoes and
white flour.

His parents supported his choice despite the American Cancer Society's
opinion that "there is no scientific evidence" that the Hoxsey method
treats cancer effectively.

Together, a family believed that they might have found a less harmful
answer to their problem and that they had the right to pursue it. It
turns out they were wrong — at least in Virginia, where even your
medicine and family structure may be regulated by the county.

Of course, Western methods of treating Hodgkin's disease offer
patients an 85% survival rate after five years. This fact alone calls
into question Cherrix's decision. Still, although chemo and radiation
protocols may be more cut-and-dried now, varying formulas and blends
remain. And it's still a crapshoot how a person will respond to any
treatment and what the long-term side effects will be.

Unfortunately, the concept that a mature teenager might choose a
so-called alternative path for himself with parental support was so
offensive to the Accomack County social services agency that Cherrix's
parents were ordered by the juvenile court to share custody of their
son with the county and face punishment for medical neglect. The
circuit court ruling ended the joint custody.

All I can say is how dare they?

As an 18-year-old, I had the most dangerous form of Hodgkin's
lymphoma, and I wasn't given treatment options either. My parents and
doctors told me I was sick, and I followed instructions: six months of
chemo, then radiation.

I was then told that I was cured, even though I now see in my records
that my white blood cell count was elevated after the "cure."

Only two years later, when a lymph node the size of a golf ball
appeared on my neck, was I re-diagnosed. I followed orders once more
after my parents chose a new doctor, who prescribed more chemo
(ineffective) and a stem cell bone marrow transplant.

I'm 29 now and thankful that I'm here to tell the story. But I face
many long-term effects from the "sublethal" treatments I endured. I
must see neurologists, neuro-oncologists, neurosurgeons,
rheumatologists, dermatologists, endocrinologists, gastroenterologists
and other specialists. The consensus: 10 years later, I have
mysterious health issues that are most likely the results of my
so-called cure. And no one knows what to do.

Do I wish I had tried something else in the past? Maybe, but probably
not. I was in a near-emergency state. I needed serious help, and
quickly.

I do, however, recall feeling trapped with few choices — not even able
to choose one hospital over another. My family and I were aware of
alternative treatments that we had found in books. But they weren't
considered options. We felt too scared to abandon Western medicine —
perhaps more scared than necessary because of the sway it holds over
America's cancer culture.

Now I see that these paths might have helped me. I now employ many
"alternatives" to help treat my current condition while I wait for
Western medicine to say something — anything.

So what constitutes "alternative treatment"?

The chemo-and-transplant combination that I received was developed by
an expert renowned for his medical protocols. But there are others I
was never told about. And who's to say that his method wasn't
"alternative"? When he came up with it, it certainly was. Would the
social services agency step in if Cherrix had found a pioneering
doctor who had concocted new mixes of pharmaceutical-grade chemicals
to fight Hodgkin's disease?

To be sure, patients with serious or potentially fatal illnesses who
circumvent Western medicine run a serious risk of missing out on a
cure. But spontaneous remissions occur every day, baffling doctors.
And many of the doctors I see regularly, post-Hodgkin's, have no
official explanation for what's going on in my body after all the
chemical and cellular experimentation.

I say that if doctors are allowed to send you home without diagnoses
after all their expensive, painful tests — and troubling test results
— everyone, even a mature, educated teenager, especially with parental
consent, should be able, without governmental intervention (or more
obscene, punishment), to take his health into his own hands.



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www.BreastImplantAwareness.org/blog.htm